John W Cooper

My name is Martha Arntson. I met John Cooper in 1976 when I was 18. He was hired by my father to work with Zurn Industries Cooling Tower Division in Tampa, Florida. John was one of my fathers top picks for the position he needed top engineers for this company that was expaning from the original Zurn Indistries in Erie, PA. I was also working in Tampa as my father wanted me to get a job after leaving Erie after high school in 1975. Yesterday, September 6, 2022 I received a phone call from one of our friends that we all worked with at Zurn that John had suddenly passed away. He recently had a cardiac stent placed and another friend of ours that lives in Tampa had spent time with John through the surgical procedure. He was found to have Stage 4 colon cancer and the doctors couldn’t address that until they took care of placing the cardiac stent. His lifelong love and wife Melody had had several painful surgeries the past year or two with hip replacement and knees. Their granddaughter Tabitha (17) lives with them in Tampa.

Come to find out from our friend Conny Treuberg who went right over to see melody,

that John and melody have no money at all saved. After Melodie’s surgeries and other issues money was tight paying the medical bills and John was just being hired as a sub contractor for a Cooling Tower company. So

he didn’t want anyone to know his medical issues as he needed this job to support his family and pay bills. I mentioned I’d seen go fund me a few years ago when another friend died suddenly. I decided to try to see if in some way we could pull together friends and other long time acquaintances from over the 45 years John worked all over the country and world designing and engineering specifically cooling tower and chimney work for Power Plants. It was a one of a kind industry.

now more than ever melody and Tabitha need some kind of income to pay for funeral expenses and other bills related to her surgeries and his recent one. I invite anyone whose ever seen someone go through such fear of how to put money in the bank when she cannot work and needs help

desperately.

i am asking anyone who has any amount of money to donate to the fund which I started at 10,000 but of course would be blessed to achieve enough for her to be able to

keep food on the table pay bills and in this of economic uncertainty it’s so important I try to do something for Johns family.

Thank you for possibly contributing to this fund me project. No services have been planned we are trying to pay for even the cremation.